Sunday Service | April 18, 2021
1 Corinthians 15.57-58
Paul is writing to a church that has a lot of issues with sin, and he faces these problems head-on throughout the book. This book packs a lot of punch, but this passage follows up the most comprehensive look into Jesus’ death and resurrection. That’s why we’re here today, because in the Church calendar, we are still in the season of Easter--50 days of celebration following Easter Sunday and leading up to Pentecost.
Paul believes that followers of Jesus are meant to shine a light into their circumstances and to be a unifying front, which is really poignant for the world we are living in today.
When Paul highlights the resurrection, he’s not just talking about overcoming sin, but overcoming death, and bringing redemption and reconciliation into the world. We need to sit with this, because we know the story of Jesus, but it is a huge miracle.
“If Christ’s story ended with death, that would be our story as well. But his story did not end in death; therefore, ours will not end in death either.” -- She Reads Truth Bible
There is so much going on in the world, and in who the Church is and what it is meant for, so it can be really difficult to live this story out together. NT Wright says that we need a “hope-fueled mission.” Jesus gives us hope in his resurrection. Literally, everything changed. The hope that people had counted on actually happened--enabling us to live in the here and now and bring that eternal hope into our daily lives.
In order to be steadfast and immovable, we must live by this hope that we have in Jesus. Jesus lived his life out as a Kingdom-of-God life, up close and personal in peoples’ lives. It wasn’t just about saving people but bringing God’s resurrection power into everyone’s lives.
NT Wright quote 1; The whole point of what Jesus was up to was that he was doing, close up, in the present, what he was promising long term, in the future. And what he was promising for the future, and doing in the present, was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, the renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose—and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that project.
Jesus did this so that we can all be free. And Jesus wants us to be his hands and feet right now in our world. We can think so often that we’re just waiting for the end, to go to heaven. His death and resurrection wasn’t meant to take us away from our lives, but to transform us into agents of his kingdom in our daily lives.
The world we live in is heartbreaking. People are killing people. There is so much division and discrimination. We cannot look at what is going on around us and not have a sinking feeling about what is happening--especially when we think about how many people around us call themselves Christians. We must lean into the hope of Jesus.
We are meant to be co-participants in the work that Jesus did. We are meant to shine light in dark places, and we’ve got work to do. Image bearers must reflect hope and light into the world. We do that by celebrating, by making things, by taking care of how we engage with the world around us. Especially now, how we engage with the world matters. We’ve got work to do, to lean into the hope that we have been given, and to do some internal reflection.
What you do with your body does matter because God has a great future instore for it….what you do in the present; painting, preaching singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building, digging wells, campaigning for justice, caring for the needing, writing poems, loving your neighbor as yourself will last into God’s future. These activities aren’t about making the present life a little more bearable; until the day we leave it behind all together. They are what we may call building for God’s kingdom”.
–NT wright.
This is the mission of the church. We must be doing meaningful, life-filled things, because of what Christ has done by us. The mission of the church must be shaped by the future hope given to us in the new testament. Jesus overcoming death was about freedom for us, and all people. Jesus overcoming death was so that we could live--right here & right now.
This is straight-up revival. We cannot gloss over what “we know,” because it must become what we live. We must look for where we can be the ones shining light in dark places, where we can bring hope in. We start by looking at the injustices around us and be agents of change there: with our words, with helping others with their words--whatever that looks like for each of us.
It was never Jesus’ intention to rescue the world from what we’re living in. He rescued us to be helpers in the whole thing. He doesn’t rescue us from the world; he rescues us so that we become stewards of the rescue process that he is still working in the world.
We need to sit with these questions. We need self-reflection.
Am I being a light right where I am, right now? Am I actually being an agent of this transformational change?
Are we leaning into hope? Are we helping others towards freedom? Are we listening? Are we feeling the sadness of the world around us? Are we lamenting?
Jesus brings us back to himself in his rescue of us, with all the other things we’ve wrapped around him stripped away. He invites us to be agents of that same rescue. It’s not just for heaven; it’s for the creation of a family, to which everyone belongs. That is where we have work to do, too.
We can lament, confess, repent, forgive. We can slow down. We can also fill up our cup with the hope of Jesus. We must tap into the source of our hope in order to share it. We fill up hope by spending time with God, in the Word, and together. We spend time resting in the hope that we have. Maybe that’s a starting place for some of us. If our hope cup is full, then our work is to show up in places where hope is needed, as a co-participant with Christ.
Jesus has overcome. We need that freedom & hope--in our lives and in our world. He is worthy of our neediness and our co-participation both.